San Fer­nan­do May­or Ju­nia Re­grel­lo ad­vised sec­ondary school pupils to not just look at an aca­d­e­m­ic path but in­to the world of the per­form­ing arts for “the buzz” to life. The may­or was speak­ing at an ap­pre­ci­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny of the T&T-Cu­ba Ed­u­ca­tion­al and Cul­tur­al Ex­change pro­gramME, Arts: Ed­u­ca­tion for Life (T&T-CECE) at the San Fer­nan­do City Hall Cham­ber on Sep­tem­ber 9.

The ini­tia­tive for the T&T-CECE be­gan in 2015 when steel pan pupils from Suc­cess/Laven­tille Sec­ondary School com­plet­ed a ten-day work­shop in Cu­ba. It was from there, ac­cord­ing to T&T-CECE project co-or­di­na­tor, Nicholas Cum­ber­batch, the de­mand for arts in schools be­came their pri­or­i­ty.

Cum­ber­batch said the T&T pupils were fas­ci­nat­ed by the hu­mil­i­ty and the se­ri­ous­ness of the Cuban pupils to their cul­ture that many would have ben­e­fit­ed from the pre­miere dance folk com­pa­ny on re­turn in 2017 and host­ed shows through­out Trinidad.

It was in this spir­it that Re­grel­lo urged pupils from Na­pari­ma Girls Col­lege and St Joseph’s Con­vent, San Fer­nan­do, to look for “the buzz” in the arts and not sole­ly in aca­d­e­mics while at school.

He said, “The arts is so crit­i­cal to our de­vel­op­ment.... you can’t all be doc­tors and lawyers’ it will be a bor­ing world. I am in­to the arts; that is where the buzz is, your teach­ers are in­vest­ing in you and there is hope and po­ten­tial in it for you. In­vest in it, dream it and dream big.”

Cum­ber­batch then en­dorsed Re­grel­lo’s sen­ti­ments and not­ed that in Jan­u­ary the Ha­bana Com­pas Dance, Per­cus­sive Dance Com­pa­ny made a rec­i­p­ro­cal vis­it to Trinidad for ten days and shared the im­por­tance of arts in ed­u­ca­tion.

He said through this fo­rum they were able to bring aware­ness to the im­por­tance of arts in ed­u­ca­tion, when they host­ed two sold out per­for­mances at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (Na­pa), Port-of-Spain and Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (south­ern cam­pus).

Cum­ber­batch said it would be an on­go­ing project in which all pupils can ben­e­fit from.

For­mer Suc­cess/Laven­tille School’s prin­ci­pal Hami­da Baksh said it was a chal­lenge for her to al­lo­cate space and fi­nances at her school in a way to in­tro­duce the per­form­ing arts.

She said, “I want­ed to ex­pand the vi­sion of the per­form­ing arts at the school. I did not have a dance teacher and want­ed to in­tro­duce dance at the school. This was the cat­a­lyst for me to work on get­ting a dance teacher, try to de­vel­op a dance stu­dio at school and bor­row some space. It was a part­ner­ship be­tween the pub­lic and the pri­vate sec­tors. It was a mod­el we used and it worked for us.”

Cum­ber­batch recog­nised the con­tri­bu­tion and com­mit­ment made to the project by di­rec­tors Baksh, John Julien and for­mer may­or/dance icon Tor­rence Mo­hammed.

(In­nis Fran­cis)